Winter Portrait (2024)

Origins of consciousness

Experimental meditation on land, consciousness, and artificial intelligence. Shot in the Okanagan and West Kootenays. Original music by Jack Brintnell.

Cartas de Arapuca

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Seance of the Past

A person spends most of their life mourning the things they have lost, unable to move on. They frequent a silent but helpful medium and embark on a spiritual journey where they linger among their past lives.

Three Mirrors Creature's Flashes of Flesh

In the aftermath of an emotional shock, a ruthless high-class manager faces her own abyss, becomes pervaded by a sensory spirit and undertakes a purifying voyage.

Amelia 2.0

After his wife Amelia suffers an aneurysm that leaves her bedridden and slowly dying, police officer Carter Summerland searches for a way to revive her. He's approached by Wesley Enterprises pioneering a new program to extend life through robotics, they get caught in a public debate over human’s relationship with technology and her right to exist.

Kshya Tra Ghya

A stream of mysterious rituals and symbols are encountered as a young boy journeys to school in the fantastical world of Kshya Tra Ghya.

Guisado on Sunset

Missed connection regret at that one late-night spot—the kind you keep playing back in your head but not quite ever remembering right, until it starts to look like something else.

Vibrant Matter

A silent city symphony, projected from gorgeous black and white 16mm film. Materia vibrante lets the resonating frequencies of the urban environment create the inaudible hum that keeps the engines of society running, absent of the inhabitants running around like little ants toiling away.

Here We Are

A housekeeper received a film made by her daughter. It's a film that combines found footages of Thailand during the Cold War with the present days images of Bangkok. Through these images she tells a story of the house owner and her own story of coming to the capital.

Me + Her

Creating a universe between two small pieces of Cardboard. When Jack and Jill of Cardboard City are separated by Jill's torrid illness, Jack must think outside the box to assure they will be together again.

Triumph and Ruins

History as immersion and dispersion in the fragments of the past, a visionary journey accompanied by the voice of Patty Pravo. Presented at the Taormina Festival '97.

Memory

Memory is a collaboration with musician Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), exploring the relationship between a musician and filmmaker and their personal reflection on memories. From Super 8 home movies and entirely handmade, this film explores familiar memories, the present moment combined with past experiences and how it all seems to evade from our present memory.

A Dying Tree

As the day ends for a worn-out office worker, he encounters the mysterious gaze of a chimpanzee, sparking a silent exchange that prompts him to make an irreversible decision.

A Dark Place

Myles navigates the tumultuous aftermath of a breakup, battling inner demons in a dark mental state.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

Rift

A girl disappears without a trace while playing hide and seek with her friend. The friend is asked to explain how it happened, but the adults around him find it hard to believe his story. With visual originality, the limits of existence are allowed to be stretched in a film that depicts the incomprehensible from a child’s perspective.

2bhk

2 flatmates unfold the layers of their relationship on a random Sunday afternoon after they encounter a power cut.

Go Forget Me

Robert Estragon has worked his way to the top of the food chain as a doctor in the city, but it has driven him to self-imposed delusion. Here, we listen as he sits and projects himself onto the mad world he observes. It all comes to a head when Willie Krapp, a young colleague, invades this world, hoping to teach Robert that it was wrong to let his own daughter die in the operating room.

MICROCYCLE

A surreal, low-budget odyssey through time, space, and toxic relationships.

1/2 Man

A visual documentary of Einstürzende Neubauten, the German underground band, by Japanese cult director Sogo Ishii, made during their 1985 tour of Japan. The band makes an elaborate and remarkably choreographed appearance in the ruins of an old ironworks which was scheduled for demolition; footage of same was incorporated into the movie and a brief appearance on stage.

The Parallel Coast

A story of The Map and The Territory. Shot in BC, California, and Nevada. Original music by Tashi Townley, Jack Brintnell, Luc Wiebe, and George Lee.

One Minute Reharsal

Actors Isabella Lafin and Rafael Grendene reharsing a scene from the movie Marriage Story (2019).

The Garden Cadences

Jone is ready to fly. She finds herself at the beginning of something new, but before she moves on, there needs to be a closure. Jone is one of Mollies, the queer-feminist collective that had been living for a decade at a trailer park next to Ostkreuz, Berlin.

The Tuba Thieves

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

A Field of Sheep

A field full of sheep is observed through the camera, preserving that moment in time forever.

Becoming Air

Breathe deeply: in 3 years, your molecules will circle Earth, as today’s oxygen came from nature.

Being in a Place: A Portrait of Margaret Tait

Drawing on a wealth of unseen archival material and unpublished notebooks, the film weaves a complex and personal portrait of Margaret’s life, from the perspective of a fellow artist sensitive to the potential Margaret envisaged for film as a poetic medium.

Happy Life

In this anxious and hectic time, Happy Life explores those unusual outlets that soothe the turmoil of the body and mind. In a meditative journey through these analgesic places, this documentary essay paints a portrait of a society in seek of meaning and relief.

Three Walls and a Window

A nuclear family sits in front of the television. The phone rings.

Ten Lives of a Cat: A Film about Chris Marker

Ten years after the death of iconic French filmmaker, Chris Marker. A filmmaker, hoping to rediscover that unique sensibility against the uncertainty of the new century, returns to the places synonymous with those incomparable and unforgettable films-- From the cat cemetery of Sans Soleil, to the mausoleum of The Last Bolshevik; The caves of Level Five to the rooftops of The Case of the Grinning Cat. A biographical portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest and most misunderstood filmmakers.

Kino Kopf

Born from steel and glass Kino Kopf is created by two inventors. They are assembled by their mother, a nurturing artist, and their Father a greedy entrepreneur. Kino Kopf is the first of its kind a sentient humanoid VHS camera. They are given a life by their mother but presented to the world by their father. Kino Kopf is the next big sensation and spurs a technological revolution. They are soon forgotten and alone as new models surpass them. Kino Kopf is left alone to contemplate if they ever had a soul, as visions of an electric cowboy dance through their dreams.

The Artist and His Canvas

An experimental film revolving around how an artist perceives a man and a woman.